The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1887-07-16
Defending his Race.

w ASHlNGION, IL. Oss y uly T. Hc
Washington Post prints two commu-
nications on the subject of the negro
race in the District of Columbia-one
from a person who writes anony
mousIy, but whom the Post pro-
nounces a well known citizen. and
the other frorn Rev. Alexander
CrummelI, rector of st. Luke's Pro-
testant Episcopal church. The first
communication claims that the negro,
instead of improving, is deteriorat-
ing; to which Mr.. Crummell. who is
one of the foremost colored men in
the country, puts in vigorous de-
NAL. Mr.. Crummell says in his
article, 81 grant with deep regret
that there Is section of the race in
this district degraded, violent, and
addicted to petty. and at times dan
Rerous crimes. L beg to state here,
however, as l have stated elsewhere,
that since emancipation, fully one
third of the black race has risen to a
superiority which runs parallel with
the level of white society in this
country. Here In this district is an
educated, cultivated property.hold-
ing class of the colored people, not a
few isolated instances but class,
proving the existence of the superb
ority which / claim. Next, that fully
one-third more have risen, not in
deed to superiority. but certainly to
a state of comfort, laborious thrift,
self support, and to domestic pro-
gress, which places them many de-
grees above the mental and physical
status of slaves. The citizens of
Washington on every side, see proofs
of this statement in thousands of the
laboring classes around them"
THE SOUTHERN EXODUS.
Among the causes which Mr..
Crummell cites for the increase of
crime among certain classes of the
negro race are as follows; 1.-THE freed
people of the South are fleeing in
large numbers from the rural districts
and overfowIng both the large cities
on the Atlantic seaboard and most of
the great internal cities and inland
towns. What causes this vast eXo-
dus? 1t is owing chiefly to a state
of semi-serfdom or peonage in which
the black farming population is held,
and which has taken the place of the
old system of slavery. The landed
proprietors of the South, not the en-
tire class, but large proportion, will
not work their farms, nor will they
sell the land to the freedmen. In
stead thereof they maintain a tenant
system of the most grinding and de-
structive character, domicling the
black laborers in miserable huts, pay
ing them in kind instead of money
with articles 100 and 200 per cent be-
yond their value, and by persistent
and systematic fraud keeping this
people at the close of every year in
perpetual debt until at last thousands
upon thousands of these Wretched
laborers rise up in utter despair,
shake the dust off their feet against
the old plantations of their seryitude,
and flock to the large towns and
cities. 1t is owing to this stale of
things that Washington has such
very large refugee black population,
poor and INDECENT, debased and Yio-
lent. They find here, first glut of
laborers and thus they fall into the
deepest penury and are driven by
the force of circumstances in dis
honorable shifts and practices to get
the barest sustenance. But next to
this they find here crushing and all
pervasiYe caste system, which refuse
respectable colored people the rentage
of decent houses; which drives well
nigh the bulk of the black popula-
ton into the lanes and alleys of the
city which masses this poor people
into close, dingy, dilapidated, and
unhealthy tenement houses with ex-
orbitant rents; which declares that
colored boys and girls shall not be-
come apprentices to trades; which
conslgns the negro to the single caste
of servant life; which cuts off almost
an entire people from the emolu-
ments of life. the hopes of progress,
and throws thousands of them into
hopelessness, desperation and de-
spair. And it is not clear and certain
that the power holding people of this
country have got to put themselves
into a different attitude to the black
race in this land before we shall see
any large recovery of this people
from the moral calamities which
slavery and caste have brought upon
them"
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